


Love and Other Contact Sports

by Headspacedeficit



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Brotherhood, Eating Disorders, Gen, OMC - Freeform, Original Male Character-Robert "Thomas" Bittle, unhealthy relationship with food
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 23:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5984860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Headspacedeficit/pseuds/Headspacedeficit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a few things Tommy feels he and Dicky need to say to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pie on the Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Ittlebittlebaby.tumblr.com proposed what if Bitty had a big brother? jackzlmmermann asked but what if: football Steve Rogers. Tempe-toews.tumblr.com wrote the fantastic little ficlet and asked for 20k of it. 
> 
> So, challenge accepted, one loving older brother with a thick southern accent and a truly astounding amount of faith, not in God or Christianity but in people and kindness and the power of an offered hand. I don't have anywhere near 20k, but I'm working on it. 
> 
> Football Steve Rogers post: http://ittlebittlebaby.tumblr.com/post/133383345856/jackzlmmermann-ittlebittlebaby-please-take-a?is_related_post=1
> 
> Ficlet post: http://tempe-toews.tumblr.com/post/133386041402/ittlebittlebaby-please-take-a-moment-to-imagine  
> Robert "Tommy" Thomas Bittle belongs to tempe-towes and has graciously given me permission to use him.
> 
> Title is a reference to Alden Carter's "Love, Football, and Other Contact Sports"

                Some days, the impression from the day he had was “loud”.  It’s never a specific kind of loud, just the kind of noise that made a lot of ruckus but didn’t say much of anything.  Noise wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Sometimes noise was 4th of July at home; lines of singing and laughing and cheers threaded with the kitchen sounds of his Moo Maw, Mama and  baby brother harmonious and perfect like embroidered sunflowers across a blue patchwork quilt.

                 But sometimes “loud” was just plain lousy.  Sometimes loud was the sound of helmets crashing the wrong way and red faced yelling and bodies that should never make sharp cracks like floors when the glass is too heavy, when a beautiful thing shatters.  But he’d rather have loud over silence. Rather have the harsh yelling and the hurt over silences that blanketed rooms so thick they smothered.

                A loud day like today, he didn’t feel much more than homesick in his pretty apartment he didn’t sleep enough in with it’s hanging plants the Nursery Lady had told him wouldn’t need much care, and the too clean kitchen.

                He considered calling his parents but it was too late to be polite and, he was being honest with himself, kind of pathetic.  He wanted to call Dicky but God knew it was too late to be doing that seeing as the kid was in college and he shouldn’t be encouraging bad habits even though he was still awake.

                Lord knows he loves that boy more than anything in the world, but he was a college student not too long ago and he knows that midnight isn’t always spent sleeping.  He’s pretty sure that he almost never spent twelve AMs asleep.

                But he’s still homesick and still kind of wired so he does this thing.  It’s not a thing he’d ever tell anyone about because the teasing would get to being too pushy.  And he’d probably explode at whoever was doing the teasing which wouldn’t be  fair to do just cause he’s got a bit of history.  The thing is, he has the masochistic practice of watching Cooking People cook mouthwatering food he’s not allowed to eat and judges the hell out of their techniques.  You don’t grow up in a Bittle household without knowing a thing or two about food.

                Tonight, it’s pie because he’d kill for a bite of toasty warm banana pudding pie.  The meringue is his favorite part with its marshmallowy chewiness and the crisp crumble under his teeth and the way the pillowy softness melts on his tongue.  He hasn’t had meringue in over half a year and he can still taste its crumbling remnants on his tongue some mornings.

                The first few results for “banana pudding pie” are disappointing.  All of the recipes are banana cream pie or banana pudding and while some of them are classic, none of them make their own crusts.  He does find a lady making red velvet biscuits though and has to firmly remind himself that he only allows himself biscuits on Sundays for a lot of very good reasons.  Doesn’t stop him from wondering if he can fit them into his diet plan with a lot of fruit and maybe if he replaced some of the white flour with that pretty yellow gram flour his nutritionist, Jenny, suggested he try.

 

He could do it. Probably. Maybe.

 

And because he evidently enjoys torturing himself, he opens up the recipe calorie calculator app on his phone and plugs it in, just to see.

It’s.

Well

He wasn’t exactly expecting the result to be good considering the ingredients.  They are biscuits after all. Flakey, buttery, beautiful biscuits.  He has such a problem.  At least half of that problem is coming from a good Southern family of good Southern cooks and a chubby stage that went on for what felt like forever.  He’s got a problem; he knows he does.  He’ll deal with it in the morning.

 

                In the morning he feels like a fool.  It’s just food, he reminds himself.  Doesn’t punch in the amount of watermelon he cuts into cubes or the summer greens- egg white omelette he tops his oatmeal made with vegetable stock and a good grind of pepper, a suggestion from an Asian UCLA kicker when he complained that he couldn’t have grits for breakfast anymore.  He tops the whole thing off with too much green onion and the melon with too heavy a handful of mint.

                His day unfolds better than his night but he drives himself insane with the persistent craving of pie.  Nothing gets rid of it.  Not the banana he munches on at lunch or the sweet potato side with his pork chop.

                At home he grabs a handful of raw almonds for all the good they do.  A potato gets slated for roasting so he cuts it into fans.  He bakes it with flaxseed oil and rosemary until the smell fills his kitchen and it crunches under his teeth.  But that’s the problem, he guesses; that it crunches instead of crumbles.  The potato makes him give up.  Tommy just resigns himself to feeling a little crazy for a while.  There’s worse things, he guesses, than feeling the same brand of crazy he’s always felt.

                3 AM proves him wrong when he finds himself on The Board.  He tries really hard not to look at The Board and he doesn’t subscribe to the newsletter but sometimes he finds himself there anyways.  He finds himself staring at his mother’s delicate crimping and the clean corners on Mrs. Brown’s caramel frosted cake.  He scrolls down to an airy confection that has Dicky written all over it.

                It’s not a cake; Dicky’s not really one for cake though he does make a mean hummingbird.  It’s a feather light chocolate angel pie topped with whipped cream and chocolate curlicues photographed against those fancy silicon mats he’s got half the club green eyed over.  Lord above it looks gorgeous but it irks him. Not that Dicky’s making and eating pies, no sir that’s just a fact of life.  But it does dig at him that there’s a reason that his baby brother is making **_his favorite_** triple chocolate angel pie and he doesn’t know why. (every pie Dicky makes is his favorite: been that way since boy was 5 and  pulling lopsided, burnt crust, too sweet mistakes from an easy bake oven they hid in the shed)

                He screws up his courage and lets his curiosity get the better of him.  He goes to Dicky’s blog.  He knows, he knows; he’s not supposed to be poking around Dicky’s personal life and he’d never tell anyone how to find it but if you don’t think that he doesn’t check up on his little brother once in awhile, then you must mind your own biscuits a whole lot better than he does.

                He clicks on the most recent one.  It looks promising.  Dicky’s smiling and got his hands covered in flour in the thumbnail which, now that he thinks about it, probably goes hand in hand.  Dicky’s voice floats out of his speakers a little tinny and higher than in real life but close enough.  He starts out with a high energy introduction that isn’t all that different from Dicky in real life either.

                Something about it is missing its marks though.  He really wants to put that down to the computer and the vlog and the fact that Dicky isn’t talking to him but to a bunch of strangers who want to know how to make their pie crusts flake instead of crumble.  But something’s odd.

                He just can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong.  Dicky seems nervous(?) or maybe a little scared.  His brother lets out a little self depreciating laugh and Tommy hates that.  He read about that.  It’s a whatyamacallit, a defense mechanism.  And maybe it’s not a good idea to ask Dicky about dating _BUT_ _MAYBE_ folk shouldn’t ask strangers for advice ‘bout their private matters.  But then he just watches as his baby brother takes a deep, shuddery breath and hides on camera from a thousand strangers he’s put himself before and say it, clear as day, “Never fall for a straight boy.”

Tommy slams his hand on his keyboard so hard a couple of keys go flying.

 

Shit.

 

ShitShitShit Mother Fucking cocksucking God damn jesus screwing fuck him up the ass hell

 

                He just.  He just heard his baby brother come out over vlog.  That’s.  That’s not how you’re supposed to hear that your brother’s not straight.  He’d guessed, kind of, but that’s not how it’s supposed to go.  At least, not with family.

God.

                Tommy scrubs at his face.  This isn’t.  He just wanted to know how his brother’s been doing and maybe see him make some pastry.  It’s what he gets for violating his brother’s privacy, though.  He looks at the clock and it takes a moment to come into focus:4:46.  He should go to bed but hell if he can sleep now.  He leans back in the creaky swivel chair and tries to think about what he should do.

                Dicky’s been having a hard time ever since Tommy left for college.  No.  Tommy’s gotta be honest with himself, things have been tough for the kid a long, long time.  Dicky’s been living in Tommy’s shadow who’s been living in Coach’s shadow and been doing as much right as he can.  He thought that they were close what with weekly calls and snapchat.

                But obviously something’s wrong if Dicky ain’t so much as talking to him.  And he thinks that he gets it; a couple of guys on the team have younger siblings that they don’t really talk to and being a professional football player has only made that worse.  But Dicky and him aren’t like that.

                But he thinks about the weekly calls that have dropped off to monthly and the way things are strained when they’re in Madison at the same time and the fact that he hasn’t visited Dicky once since he started college at his fancy private school.  But maybe that’s a little resentment there on Tommy’s part.

                He’s a second string quarterback who went to a state college (an exceptionally good football college, but a state college) who got picked second round and only got the chance to start at UGA when the first string QB twisted his knee.  He shared a dorm room packed with three other fellas and rented his books second hand.  And here Dicky is, starting in his freshman year and paying for his own materials off of ad revenue and living in the hockey frat house.  He wants good things for his brother, but he’s a little bitter.

                Maybe he should go up.  He needs to talk to Dicky and this isn’t the kind of conversation you have over phone or text message.  And maybe it’ll pull apart some of the ideas he’s got about Samwell and the kind of private schools he thought you could smell the money off of when he was on the road since now he has that kind of thing.  Now that he actually makes money.

                He brings up the Samwell Men’s Hockey schedule and the college calendar and picks a weekend before finals.  When he wakes up in the afternoon, he decides that it’s the best 4 AM purchase he’s made yet. And he wasn’t even drunk.

 


	2. Chapter 2

            He hates planes. He hates planes, trains, boats, trams, buses, subways, trolleys and cars he’s not driving for longer than the time it takes to get from Madison to the state fair. If this was a cartoon, he'd be turning green around the gills and swaying like a willow in the wind. He’d felt bad for the old lady seated next to him and his bulk until she’d started snoring 2 minutes from takeoff and now he was just jealous of her ease.

 

            His phone chimes with a message. He’s glad to see Dicky’s smiling face shining out at him and “farmer’s market has pipins!!!” followed by a string of smiley faces and an ironic BD which makes him snort. Dicky’s a dork. Tommy’s a dork. Runs though the family down both lines and up again through the roots.

            A cold, papery hand lands on his bicep and he just about jumps out of his skin. The elderly lady smiles at him with a line of drool at the corner of her mouth. She offers him a cough drop and a tissue, which is a considerate thing to do. She drops them into his hand and gives his arm a reassuring squeeze before she’s out like a light again.

 

            Another message comes in, this time a picture of tiny, golden apples piled into a basket. Underneath is “$20 for the basket”. The easy texting had started right up again when he'd told Dicky that he was coming to visit. He couldn’t keep his phone on vibrate for fear that it was going to shake itself off the table. So he wonders if he should call.

 

            It’d be the difference between 4 unexpected, extra hours with his baby brother or a surprise. The opportunity is the kind of blessing that you don’t expect out of a canceled flight. He’d jumped on the chance and made the midnight drive to the Dallas Airport to wait through security and grabbed a bitter, jet fuel like cup of coffee to help stay awake through it.

 

            He should tell him, right? Just tap out a message or God forbid, call. Cowardice has never done him any good for all that he has a lot of it. Instead, he lays the phone on his pull out tray. Face down.

 

It’s  
He’ll

 

He tries to ignore his roiling stomach and attempts to get some sleep.

 

            Touching down in Boston is not fun. The elderly lady (Ethel, dearie) pats his hand again as they’re coming down. He doesn’t pry his white knuckled grip off the armrests until they stop moving.

 

            He helps Ethel swing down her powder blue carry on that acknowledged that airline standards existed. Acknowledged and did not care. The bag was compact and heavier than just about anything he’d brought but in her defense, most of his luggage was either empty to accommodate gift buying or occupied with Aunt Jenny’s “Essentials for Bakers” which he’d promised he’d get to Dicky one way or another. Given how busy she was with the Pie Kitchen, he was kind of surprised that she’d had time to visit with him at all despite the 4 hour drive.

 

            Before he’d left, one of her students, Ari, had plopped a little, rhubarb cobbler on top of the boxes of stuff slated for Dicky with a little half-smile and, “Next time I’ll have peach.” And then Aunt Jen had ruined the moment with a holler of “Bring the little Georgia ones!” He’d blushed so hard he couldn’t pass it off as Texas sunburn.

 

            Ari’d smirked, popped a hip and spun on the ball of one foot like someone who went to Salsa socials every week. Tommy had stared as the line of that back and the flex of those shoulders walked away. He’d been staring as Ari looked straight at him and wink before going back inside.

 

            Tommy had been very grateful that he’d been laden down the front with big, heavy, bulky boxes all the way to his truck. The maneuvering it took to secure all of the stuff in the cab had given him some time to firmly - not firmly - strictly, think about sewing buttons and even lines of square boss stitches.

 

He, uh, might have news of his own to tell Dicky.


	3. Chapter 3

            Tommy’s done things he isn’t proud of. Tommy’s hasn’t done things he wished he did. He’s messed up so much but he tries to be good to his family despite that. He sends a chunk of his paycheck back home and he pays into Dicky’s college fund. He calls home weekly and always answers his brother’s calls and texts. He keeps his personal life out of the media and he doesn’t get drunk where his Moo Maw could see. He tries to go home at least quarterly.

 

Tommy made sure that people saw him on a pedestal because life was easier if everyone thought the best of you. It’s time he earned it.

 

It’s time he earned it and no indecent, long haired, pornstached, half high Yankee with a megaphone is going to cow him into otherwise.

 

            To be fair, Megaphoned Yankee hasn’t yelled at him yet and looks just as surprised to see Tommy as Tommy is to see him. Megaphoned Yankee is a big personality. Tommy half expects him to be bigger for it. He’s suspicious as hell which is a good thing considering Tommy could be anyone and 6’6” Georgian Texas transplants don’t show up on your doorstep everyday.

 

“Afternoon. I’m callin’ on Eric Bittle. Is this the right house?” He’s in the right place. The GPS, Massachusettes map and google earth couldn’t all steer him wrong.

 

            Megaphoned Yankee glances from the box crammed with packages and jars to the rental behind him (a tiny 2 seater, blue Nissan with, importantly, a highly adjustable driver’s seat), and back up to Tommy’s face.

 

            It’s kind of a lot of up. Tommy puts him at half a foot shorter? Maybe a little more? Definitely not the whole nearly-a-foot he’s got on Dicky and suddenly, Tommy gets a little wrench in his gut.

 

            He knows his baby brother is a little on the small side but there’s small and then there’s crushed. And these hockey boys. Well, they’re big and mean and fast, faster than you can manage to be on anything else. And this is all ridiculous to be worrying about because he knows Dicky’ll be fine.

 

            Boy’s been through playoffs and practises and more games than he can remember. But he just can’t shake the image of Dicky crashing into the ice. Dicky who went dizzy in the kitchen. Dicky quiet and small on the couch in the afternoon quiet. Dicky dodging Mama’s (and his) mother henning with a flippant laugh that rang hollow and strained. It’s not the first time he’s met teamates of Dicky’s but Lord they grow them big up here. He plasters on a smile and hefts the box. “I’ve got presents.”

 

 

Megaphoned Yankee lets him in.


End file.
